


Woven

by Clementive



Series: Over Your Threads [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spirits, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Fantasy, Forbidden Love, Melancholy, Opposites Attract, Spirit World, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: Konan wove their solace out of his flesh, one thread of shadow at a time.
Relationships: Kakuzu/Konan (Naruto)
Series: Over Your Threads [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953706
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Exchange no Jutsu 2020





	Woven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zombie_honeymoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_honeymoon/gifts).



> To Escape_chan: I really like your fics (and your prompts!), so I just had to treat you with something however small. :DD Hope you like it!
> 
> Enjoy the angst, y'all!

In his slumber, the spirit world shuddered, pulled apart from inside, pushed apart from the outside by drifting spirits.

Konan wove faster. And faster.

Kakuzu woke up when his back unravelled, strings and shadows, hissing, screeching.

He heard rips and rustles, dry chirping and gurgling. ' _Cranes_ ', Kakuzu thought. She had made cranes like she said she would.

The spinning wheel squeaked, stopped. His back split open, pulled and scattered in whirling threads.

He grunted.

Kakuzu cracked an eye open, his mouth now slit, his skin agitated, alive, angry. Through the open sliding doors, he could see the cranes in the garden she had created. There was a cherry blossom tree now, its cotton paper branches almost translucent. They hung above the pond where drapes of cotton paper shook without water. Waterless waves undulated with the shadows of silky paper and textured fish.

His arm twitched to his side, detaching from him one stitch at a time.

Kakuzu shifted his gaze toward Konan. Her blue hair fell sharply around her and koi fish swam through the multiple layers of her kimono flapping their colourless fins. Her white hands erupted and disappeared inside her wide sleeves despite the still spinning wheel.

Kakuzu grunted again and closed his eyes.

"Sorry," Konan said softly, stilling. "There's a knot..."

The black strings coming from him had become white threads in her hands. They fell at the base of the wheel in woven paper, cutting, yet gleaming. Neatly folded.

Konan slowly rolled the wheel backward, inch by inch, and the threads loosened.

His arm fell apart, black strings curling back toward him.

"Konan," Kakuzu croaked, half-amused.

Hesitantly, Konan touched the knot at the top of the spinning wheel. It hissed angrily, untamed, snapping and flickering between darkness and light.

"I know we can't stay here indefinitely, I just wish..." She lowered her head, shook it, before harshly tugging at the wheel.

It spun, its edges blurring, and the spirit world wobbled, its foundations shaken. Konan's hand slammed down and stopped the wheel.

She breathed hard.

The thin layers of the garden had wrinkled and ripped in more places.

"I just wish we had more time," Konan finished softly.

On their bed, Kakuzu lay uneven, reattaching slowly.

His body glided across the tatami and rose to a standing position once he reached her. His spine snapped as it straightened. Kakuzu pushed her hair once her shoulder. She rolled her head back, briefly closing her eyes as she leaned in for his touch.

"Once something is spent, it's spent, I told you that," Kakuzu whispered against her neck without touching her.

He reached across from her and picked up one of the lanterns she had woven. He held it in front of them. The paper was delicate, stretched thin across spiderwebs of pulsating threads. He smirked. She was always frugal when she wove him.

His face looming over the lantern, Kakuzu breathed fire into it. It crinkled, spreading thinly as orange shadows across paper.

He let the lantern go and it flew, suspended without air, without fire, unbounded by the pull of earth and the harshness of water.

Kakuzu pulled Konan to her feet.

"This moment is not spent yet."

Kakuzu took her hands in his and kissed her knuckles. His hands shrivelled where they touched hers.

Her skin radiated light. Life. Holding her, Kakuzu felt the thumps and flutters of her heart, the absence of his. At the back of his throat, he tasted ashes and rot. Death.

The strings, the shadows, the sins that made him, that she alone could unravel, wheezed in sync. Sick.

Until the last one, the others lanterns flared up at their feet. They rose and drifted slowly around them, some of them escaping in the garden of paper.

In the spirit world she had woven, there was no sun, no sky. And now, it fractured farther, struggling to accommodate them.

Konan stepped closer and Kakuzu wrapped her in his arms. She quivered like silk, depleted in light and he matched her gestures, depleted in shadows.

Panting, she rested her forehead against his chest.

Panting, he held her tighter.

The lanterns swayed around them, alit, adrift, for the time they had left.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Stay safe guys!


End file.
